Soil Connect, the digital marketplace focused on the multibillion dollar soil and aggregates industry, has announced the closing of its $3.25 million seed funding round led by TIA Ventures, a New York City-based seed-stage investment fund.
Heartland Ventures co-led the round, which also included investments from a diverse mix of venture capital firms, real estate managers, and construction companies, including CEMEX Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Situs Real Estate, Altmark Group, AB Investment Group, J.G. Pertucci Company, and Bazella Contracting.
In conjunction with the funding, Soil Connect launched an e-ticketing service that advances its mission to revolutionize the transport and management of soil and aggregates. Historically, the critical ticketing function–which supports the tracking and invoicing of dirt-related transactions–has been completed manually on paper. Under the paper system, tickets are often illegible, accidentally discarded or lost altogether, which can result in a significant loss of time and productivity for contractors.
“As a third-generation builder and developer, the most frustrating part of the job for me was how I continually saw technology change the game for other sectors but bypass the soil and aggregates industry,” said Cliff Fetner, founder and CEO of Soil Connect. “Our goal in launching Soil Connect is not just to create a marketplace, it is to establish the first pure-play one-stop shop for the industry. Making it easier for these individuals to find or dispose of materials was a critical first step, and the e-ticketing function takes it to the next level, further integrating the platform and advancing our objective of supporting the entire transaction from end to end. It’s also entirely contactless–an important attribute during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Daniel Fetner, co-founder and advisor to Soil Connect, and principal at Alpaca VC, said, “The diverse make-up of the investors in the seed round is a clear reflection of the uniqueness of Soil Connect’s value proposition as well as the compelling market opportunity for a marketplace of this type, which is solving for a significant need in the industry.”
Andy Greenfield, General Partner of TIA Ventures, added, “A large part of our investing strategy focuses on finding companies solving visceral pain in industries that haven’t changed in a very long time. We also love marketplace business models where SaaS tools add incremental value for the users. Cliff and the team have founder-market-fit in spades, and Soil Connect’s marketplace is unique in that their customers sit on both the supply and demand sides. This gives them an advantage in acquiring customers and allows them to scale faster than a typical marketplace.”
Source: Soil Connect
